The Swap - By Antony Moore Page 0,25

less than the last time he made this joke. 'I thought that was you skulking in the corner when we came in. Only a sad bastard drinks on his own, mate. And you are a bit of a sad bastard, aren't you? Look at you, you look like a fucking weirdo. Why don't you grow a decent amount of hair and buy some clothes that aren't designed for teenagers?'

'Er, yeah, OK, Dad.' Harvey reached for his drink but found he hadn't got one. For once this was a good thing as it meant he could focus on that rather than on Jeff.

'Pint of Guinness and a white wine when you've a minute, mate,' he called and turned to his little group. 'Drinks?'

They sat in the corner, Harvey and Maisie and Rob and Steve, who came to join them. Jeff had a chair at the table and no one took it but he spent most of the evening in the doorway with the rugger buggers, as Harvey had always known them, shouting and at times singing in a fashion that Harvey could only feel was not conducive to marital bliss. Mostly, though, he was unaware of Jeff or of anyone else but her. Steve and Rob were debating politics and football and beer and music, and it was a conversation he could have recited by heart before they began it. So he talked to Maisie Cooper. It struck him as funny, when he had time to think of it afterwards, that when the evening started he would have said that nothing short of an earthquake could drive the thought of that afternoon from his head, yet for long periods it hardly entered his mind so complete was his immersion in her. What did they talk about? As he walked home, Harvey asked himself that but found no obvious answer. Or none that could account for how good it had felt to do the talking. And the listening. She was interesting, she knew about stuff. And not just beer and sport and music but about people and ideas, stuff that he used to think was important but which somehow got lost in the comic shop and the growing older and not really getting what he wanted or even knowing what that was. When occasionally Rob or Steve had tried to join their conversation, usually when the other of them had staggered to the bar or the toilet, she had been kind and open but had made it clear, to Harvey at least, that she preferred to return to the one-to-one as soon as possible. Once or twice Harvey had caught in Steve or Rob's eye an enquiring look, familiar from another century, but he had ignored it. Let them think what they wanted, he had no answer to those looks because he had no idea what was happening. As he wandered, cold but smiling, back up Trelawney Road at nearly midnight it struck him that life-changing days come along only very rarely. There seemed at that moment a good chance that this might be one for two entirely unrelated reasons. It made him smile and, because he had been on the whisky for a nightcap, it made him sing. So he ended the evening singing a plaintive, if somewhat uncertain, solo of 'Reeling in the Years' by Steely Dan (it had been playing in the pub): when only a few hours earlier he would have laid pretty long odds against ever singing again.

Chapter Eleven

'Haaarvey! Time to rise and shine. You've got a party to go to today.'

Fumbling in the dark for cigarettes, Harvey heard the voice and closed his eyes very tight. Everything was wrong. His mouth felt as though someone had come in during the night and used it as a toilet: there was unknown but malodorous matter at the back of his throat yet a sort of slimy, unnatural wetness on his tongue. His head seemed to have been remoulded so that it now came to a point in the blinding pain between his eyeballs. His belly lay about him, jellified and sagging to the sides, forming a ring around his prone form. From hours too early to consider, his father had been busily walking along the passage outside his room making a noise. This was a familiar practice and was one of a number of reasons why Harvey very rarely went home for holidays. Today, Donald Briscow had been calling. 'Do you know where that drill is, Ann? I